Introducing Postrank Connect – web’s most intelligent and comprehensive service to identify and measure the value of online influencers and their community of followers

Consumers trust the reviews and opinions of those in their networks far more than marketing messages delivered through broadcast media. And PR/marketing professionals know that trusted influencers are key to maximum brand impact.

Brands, how much money have you spent on campaigns that failed to meet your PR objectives? Influencers, are you looking for ways to raise your profile, become more influential and benefit your community? Let PostRank Connect help.

PostRank Connect is the web’s most intelligent and comprehensive service to identify and measure the value of online influencers and their community of followers. Connect analyzes influence by topic, geography and the social engagement with an author’s content across more than 25 social networks.

What is Engagement on Social Media?

Engagement refers to the attention other people pay to your published content, like blog posts, news & articles. They see and read a post, and then because it’s interesting, inspiring, or controversial, they get “hooked” and decide to take further action.

Getting hooked and acting on it when you read something that makes you think, laugh, or get angry is engagement. The actions that people then take are called engagement events.

What are Engagement Events?

“Event” implies a single, meaningful occurrence. Engagement events are individual activities performed using specific social networks, sites, or applications, like those referenced in the sidebar. One tweet is an engagement event, for example. So is posting one comment, or voting one digg. PostRank tracks the following Social Networks for engagement events:

Engagement events are social activities centered around people sharing your content online with other people. But just as all the social interactions people perform do not have the same level of effort, meaning, or importance, not all engagement events represent the same level of effort, importance or “weight”. (Think of the difference between making small talk with a stranger and a heart-to-heart with your best friend.)

That is why PostRank has developed a system to analyze and score engagement events. This system is based on how much effort performing each event requires, and how much engagement with the content (like a blog post) that demonstrates. That score is expressed in engagement points.

Track and understand your Social Engagement

Are you Influentical? Get PostRank Analytics for free if you verify your blog with PostRank Connect.

What are Engagement Points?

Engagement points are the numerical values assigned to each type of engagement event. The more effort and engagement an event demonstrates, the higher the points value. For example, a highly engaged event like leaving a comment on a blog might be assigned a number of engagement points 10 times higher than a fairly passive event like a click or pageview.

Since each blog post, news item, or article might have a variety of types of engagement events, each with a different value, we tally up those points to give each one an engagement score.

An engagement score is the total number of engagement points earned by all the sources of engagement events for a single piece of content, like a blog post. So the number of points for each trackback, comment, tweet, Delicious bookmark, Reddit vote, etc. are added up and the total is the engagement score for that blog post.

Over time, publishers can use their posts’ engagement scores as an at-a-glance measurement of how well their content is doing with their audience. Perhaps the score for each post goes up gradually. Perhaps the scores vary widely. These changes in the engagement scores for publishers’ content make up engagement trends.